Friday, October 4, 2013

This past
Sunday, September 29th, over 1500 paid attendees turned out to watch pumpkins being
thrown more than 500 feet using state-of-the-art versions of the
medieval “trebuchet” siege engine. The weather was warm and sunny
for the fifth annual VT Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival, which was held,
for the first time, on the grounds of the Stoweflake Mountain Resort
and Spa in Stowe. The event raised over $9,000 for the Lamoille
Family Center in Morrisville VT.

Food
and beverage was served to the festive crowd, while House of Dunn
served up tasty live music throughout the event. For the kids, there
was a “bounce house”, mini-Olympics, face-painting, pumpkin
carving and pumpkin bowling. And in spite of warm weather, the Chili
Cook-off was popular enough to run out of chili by 3pm.

19
teams (10 youth and 9 adult, from five states) set up small, medium,
and large trebuchets in 4 divisions: Lightweight (for chuckers 10 and
under), Middleweight Junior (17 and under), Middleweight Open, and
Heavyweight. Each competitor had 3 opportunities to fling their
proportionately-sized pumpkin (or tomato for Lightweight), while
tweaking various settings on their machines to optimize the throw.

The
crowd was thrilled to watch records being shattered in all divisions
(as they were last year, as well). The longest throw was a 5 pound
pumpkin, which flew 521 ft , after being chucked by Chris McGrody's
(from NH) trebuchet, “Hammer of the Gourds”, in the Heavyweight
division. However it was a Middleweight trebuchet, “Angry Pumpkins”
from CT, that took the overall Best Design prize (after mathematical
compensation for the weight and size differences), with a 349 ft.
chuck of a one pound pumpkin. If Angry Pumpkins were scaled up to
Heavyweight size, it would throw a 5 pound pumpkin a whopping 598 ft;
almost two football fields!

The
event organizer, Dave Jordan, is looking forward to an even more
successful event next Fall, and the Stoweflake Resort has already
offered their facility for next season. Dave would like to thank the
many volunteers who contributed their time and equipment, the
Lamoille Family Center and specifically the event sponsors:
Stoweflake Resort, Stowe UPS store, Aubuchon Hardware, PP +D Brochure
Distribution, Boyden Farm, Button Land Surveyors, Umiak Outfitters,
Trattoria LaFesta, Bee's Knees, Stowe Soaring, and Innsbruck Inn.

Grand
Prize results:

All
trebuchets compete in their own division and the top three in each
division get a trophy. The winner of each division gets a prize and
a chance at the Grand Prize. The four winners are mathematically
scaled-up to “Heavyweight size” to see which trebuchet threw the
farthest for their size.

For the second year in a row, the Grand Prize
was won by Dwight Snowberger from CT, whose floating arm trebuchet,
“Angry Pumpkins”, improved by over 80 feet from last year to
narrowly beat Team Jordan (Don Jordan from NY and his brother Chris
Jordan from FL) with their King Arthur design trebuchet. The Jordan
brothers also improved by about 80 feet from last year, and like last
year, still got nipped by Snowberger.